"To me alone and to a few others." "How do you mean, a few others? Hasn't the secret been kept?" "Yes, yes, the secret has been well kept by all who know it. Have no fear; it is very much to their interest, I assure you, not to divulge it." "Then how do you know it?" "Through an old servant and private secretary of the Grand-duke Hermann, the last of the name. This servant, who died in my arms in South Africa, began by confiding to me that his master was secretly married and had left a son behind him. Then he told me the great secret." "The one which you afterwards revealed to Kesselbach." "Yes." "One second . . . Will you excuse me? . . ." Lupin bent over M. Formerie, satisfied himself that all was well and the heart beating normally, and said: "Go on." Steinweg resumed: "On the evening of the day on which Bismarck died, the Grand-duke Hermann III. and his faithful manservant--my South African friend--took a train which brought them to Munich in time to catch the express for Vienna. From Vienna, they went to Constantinople, then to Cairo, then to Naples, then to Tunis, then to Spain, then to Paris, then to London, to St. Petersburg, to Warsaw . . . and in none of these towns did they stop. They took a cab, had their two bags put on the top, rushed through the streets, hurried to another station or to the landing-stage, and once more took the train or the steamer." "In short, they were being followed and were trying to put their pursuers off the scent," Arsène Lupin concluded. "One evening, they left the city of Treves, dressed in workmen's caps and linen jackets, each with a bundle slung over his shoulder at the end of a stick. They covered on foot the twenty-two miles to Veldenz, where the old Castle of Zweibrucken stands, or rather the ruins of the old castle." "No descriptions, please." "All day long, they remained hidden in a neighboring forest. At night, they went up to the old walls. Hermann ordered his servant to wait for him and himself scaled the wall at a breach known as the Wolf's Gap. He returned in an hour's time. In the following week, after more peregrinations, he went back home to Dresden. The expedition was over." "And what was the object of the expedition?" "The grand-duke never breathed a word about it to his servant. But certain particulars and the coincidence of facts that ensued enabled the man to build up the truth, at least, in part." "Quick, Steinweg, time is running short now: and I am eager to know."